← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Jan 8, 2011
00:28:13
The assassin who was garlanded: Orla Guerin on murder on the streets of Islamabad and...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the program broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the BBC iPlayer
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on the top of our website.
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To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of our stories, you can sign up to our
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Twitter feed as well.
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But now, presenting the BBC Radio 4 edition, here's Kate.
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80.
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Today, Pakistan in turmoil after the killing of one of its most outspoken liberal politicians. The man who lost the election in Ivory coast still isn't budging from the presidential palace. There's a startlingly close encounter with the son of God in Rio. And this useful tip from an island in the Indian Ocean. Don't ask a giant tortoise to join you for dinner. Thousands of Pakistanis attended the state funeral this week of the assassinated governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. Mr. Taseer, one of the country's most senior politicians, was shot on Tuesday by a bodyguard angered by his opposition to blasphemy laws. Many leading Pakistanis have condemned the assassination, but a hefty number have praised the killer. Olagarin, who's in the capital, Islamabad, says the week's events raise questions about the extent of extremism in the country.
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When he was finished, the killer calmly laid down his automatic weapon, raised his hands in the air and waited to be arrested. At his feet, the the body of Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province, shot 27 times. One of Pakistan's most liberal voices silenced forever, he was a champion of the powerless and a vocal critic of the Taliban. The governor was a rare breed here, a self made tycoon, engaging, brave and blunt with a wicked wit. His self confessed assassin was one of his own bodyguards, Malik Mumtaz Kadri. He boasted later with a satisfied smile that he had killed a blasphemer. When Kadri was brought to court, supporters showered him with rose petals. A group of young lawyers offered their services free. Influential clerics have been singing the assassin's praises and 500 Sunni Muslim scholars called for a boycott of the governor's funeral. Salman Taseer became a target when he criticized Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, which critics say are often used to persecute minorities. He called for the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, a charge she denies. For many in this overwhelmingly Muslim nation, the blasphemy laws are sacred. For hardliners, they are more sacred than human life. The governor was condemned with fatwas he responded with Twitter, to which he was addicted. I was under huge pressure to bow down, he wrote, refused, even if I'm the last man standing. But who will stand against the extremists now? Liberals have been driven into hiding. Instead of fighting the fundamentalists, the government is advising senior figures to get more protection. One articulate and normally outspoken politician was unavailable for interview this week. She'd been told not to stay in one place for too long. Anyone who dares to speak out knows the next bullet cause could be for them Pakistan's courageous and courteous minorities. Minister Shabazz Bhati speaks of the risks with resignation. I know that it will happen to me someday, he told me. The extremists have said that I will be killed. These fanatics are hell bent on terrorizing the whole society. I don't care for my life. I care for what I believe in. I am carrying on as before. The minister says he's pursuing the vision of Pakistan's founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a vision of an enlightened modern state. But all Pakistanis don't share that dream. At a bustling Islamabad market not far from where the governor was killed, we asked shoppers for their views. Two men were quick to condemn the killing, two others equally quick to defend it. I would have killed the governor myself if I had the chance, one of them told us, in a matter of fact sort of way. There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd. The fact is that some Pakistanis openly rejoiced in the assassination. That's a big wake up call about the extent of religious extremism here, according to Islamabad political analyst Musharraf Zaidi. He says rational Pakistanis must unite against those who want to create a medieval Stone Age society. This has to become a tipping point, he says. We have to retake the mosques from the extremists, and that'll be a long term fight. But he admits the killing has muted dissent. People are afraid for their lives, he says. They're afraid for their families. Most of all, I think they're afraid for the future of this country. The assassination and the reaction to it have exposed deep divisions here and heightened fears about where Pakistan is heading. There's a sense that the extremists are winning. The governor was killed outside my local shops, a little cluster of grocers and cafes popular with foreigners. The day after he was robbed of life, a small group of civil society activists gathered at the spot. One little girl in a pink anorak stood in silence, holding a placard. We Salute Salman Taseer, it read, for speaking up for minorities. The protesters lit candles and chanted slogans pledging to fight on. And some will, like Shahbaz Bhatti. The assassination has given me more courage, the minister says. I believe every drop of blood can lead to change. But for others, the loss of Salman Taseer is also the loss of hope.
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Olagarin in Islamabad, the man who lost the presidential election in Ivory coast is still holed up in the presidential palace this morning, still refusing to stand down in favour of the man who won it, Alasand Ouattara. Mr. Ouattara says special forces should now be sent in to remove the man standing in his way, Laurent Gbagbo. Our man. Mark Doyle, who for several years in the 1990s lived and worked in the Ivory coast port of Abidjan, has been back to report on this post election crisis.
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How times change. There's a hotel on the edge of Abidjan that we used to visit as a family on Sunday afternoons in those days. In the late 1990s, a our first son was growing from being a toddler into a small boy. We took him to the Golf Hotel to have pony rides in the extensive gardens lapped by the salt water lagoons which snake around this city. Well, I've just been back to the Golf Hotel again for the first time in over a decade. This time I flew there in a United nations helicopter because the Golf Hotel is now a virtual state within a state. It's the headquarters of the government in waiting of Alassan Watara, the man who almost all observers believe won the November presidential elections in Ivory Coast. He's been cheated of his prize by what the UN says is the manipulation of the real results by the man who refuses to leave the presidential palace, the incumbent leader, Laurent Gbagbo. The UN chopper touched down on the large grassy field where our son used to be led around on a pony by a stable lad. On one side of the field I spotted still there, the pony club offices. But on the other side there was a company of United nations troops from Senegal dressed in army combat fatigues. Suddenly, the post electoral crisis in Ivory coast became very real to me. The UN peacekeepers are there to protect Mr. Watara and his colleagues from the sometimes violent youth group loyal to Laurent Gbagbo that's known as the Young Patriots. In the late 1990s, Alassan Wattera was a politician out in the cold. He hails from the largely Muslim north of the country. The southern political elite, which is mostly Christian, had conspired to exclude him from running for office. Their argument was that Watara wasn't a real Ivory coast citizen because he had relatives in the neighbouring state of Burkina Faso. But after 20 years of legal and political battles, the northerner fell finally got all his nationality papers in order. He ran for president last year in what most people here think was the most democratic election Ivory coast has ever had. And according to the United Nations, Alassan Ouattara won. The day I visited the Gulf Hotel, the one with the soldiers, not the pony rides. Watara's government was holding a cabinet meeting in an air conditioned tent in the hotel gardens. The ministers strolled up the winding garden paths in their dark suits and walked through the tent flaps into the meeting for all the world, as if this was a normal government running a stable country. But it was partly theatre, of course. The cabinet is in the bizarre situation of only holding a few of the reins of power that affect foreign relations. African countries, for example, have given the government elect signing powers at the regional central bank. And Western countries have derecognized ambassadors appointed by Laurent Gbagbo, allowing diplomats loyal to Alassan Ouattara to to take their place. A few days later, on the other side of town, I joined a convoy of vehicles carrying a group of African leaders as they swept, sirens blaring, into the presidential palace. Three African presidents had come to town to try to persuade Mr. Gbagbo to step down. More and more African countries these days have democratically elected governments. The continent is embarrassed by the spectacle of this immovable president. Laurent Gbagbo has unconvincingly said that all the United nations monitors and international diplomats and think tanks who watched the election all got it wrong. It was he, not Alassan ouattara, who won. Mr. Gbagbo has a media savvy side as well. When he was in opposition many years ago, I remember being introduced to him in his then modest private garden. He was relaxing in a vest and shorts at the time, but wouldn't miss a chance to meet the BBC. So he stood up quickly and shook my hand firmly, even as he was buttoning up a fresh shirt at the doors of the presidential palace. Last week, Laurent Gbagbo was still deploying his presentation skills. He met each visiting African leader in person, calling them by their first names and embracing them like brothers. Laurent Gbagbo is a big man with a broad, friendly looking face. And when he wants to, he can turn on a huge toothy grin. He did so with each of the guests, holding them in place in front of the cameras with that firm handshake. The first names and the jovial mine host welcoming style were quite deliberate, of course. Welcome my fellow African president. Laurent Gbagbo seemed to be saying, welcome to my house, my friend, my fellow member of the club of African leaders. Welcome to my house, which is of course a presidential palace and which of course you're not going to make me leave.
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Mark Doyle in Abidjan with that tale of two presidents. A big new offshore gas field's been discovered in the Caspian Sea, not far from the coast of already energy rich Azerbaijan. The find has fueled yet more interest from international investors in this, the fastest growing republic in the Caucasus. But Jonathan Fryer's been finding out that behind the euphoria generated by the country's rapid economic development, many of its people are marked by a pervading sense of loss.
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The pungent smell of rotten eggs hits you as you drive out of Baku airport. An invisible cloud of sulphur wind rolling across the bleak tundra as you head for the Caspian Sea. Oil catapulted the then Russian controlled Azerbaijan into the world's consciousness at the beginning of the 20th century when the historic city of Baku suddenly became one of the most prosperous places on earth. Around the city's Ottoman core, great European style mansions were built by the new elite. The Gulbenkians, the Nobels. The names still resonate round their echoing halls. And now Baku is experiencing a second boom from the oil and gas produced in or transiting Azerbaijan. If you look down on the city from the heights of what's known as Martyr's Alley, whole swathes resemble a giant construction site. Martyr's Alley was originally a cemetery dedicated to the Azeri victims of fighting in 1918 when Azerbaijan gained a short lived independence from the Russians. But in April 1920, the victorious Bolsheviks incorporated the infant republic into the new Soviet Union. Martyr's Alley was razed and replaced with an amusement park named after the early Bolshevik leader Sergei Kirov. I remember playing on the rides in the Kirov Luna Park, a local friend, Katya, tells me as we walk along Martyrs Alley. I was young. I didn't know. In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Azerbaijan seized the opportunity for independence once again. But there were more casualties as Soviet troops resisted. After the situation calmed, the Kirov amusement park was removed and Martyrs Alley reinstated. Some relics of the Soviet era have been preserved, notably the enormous wedding cake edifice known as the House of Government which dominates the downtown seaside boulevard. Formerly the headquarters of the Soviet administration, it now houses several Azerbaijan Government ministries. These include the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, whose minister, Abolfaz Garayev, is dwarfed by his vast office, which has been gutted and refurbished in ultra modern style, all brilliant white. When I visited Mr. Golaev, he just returned from an official visit to neighbouring Iran. Secular Muslim Azerbaijan could hardly be more different socially from the Iranian Islamic Republic, with its theocratic hierarchy. But it's important to concentrate on our common elements, the minister says cheerily. You can see the Persian influences here in Baku. Just look at the carpets. Mr. Goriev puts a positive spin on the fact that the Persians, the Turks, the Russians and the Armenians have trampled all over Azerbaijan at various stages in its history. We're at a crossroads, he says. We must celebrate the extraordinarily rich legacy of our geographical location. His enthusiasm is echoed by Adil Mamadov of Azerbaijan's Export and Investment Promotion Foundation. We can be the hub of the whole region, he told me excitedly. Our door is open to everyone who wants to take part in our development. But I wonder if all Azerbaijanis are so generous of spirit towards past or present enemies. When Katya takes me to a restaurant deep in Baku's old City to sample traditional Azeri food and to meet some of her friends, I asked one of the men present what his strongest personal memory was of his country's trouble times. I remember when Mikhail Gorbachev was in power. He said he decided there had to be a crackdown on alcoholism, which was undermining the Soviet workforce. So the local commissar in my district, who always eagerly followed orders from Moscow, sent us school children into the vineyards to hack down the vines. We destroyed a whole area that produced some of the best wine in the Caucasus. We were young, so we didn't understand. Katya catches her friend's eye and they both laugh. Then they each raise a glass of red wine from a vineyard that is now producing again and propose a toast to the future.
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Jonathan Fryer in Baku. Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff, who was inaugurated on New Year's Day, has immediately signalled that maintaining economic stability and low inflation are among her top priorities. Her country, along with Russia, India and China, is one of the so called Bric nations with rapidly developing economies and geopolitical clout to match. But Justin Rowlatt, who's making a BBC2 series on the new shape of the world economy, says the Brazil civilian boom can at times seem a little fragile.
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Do you want to see Jesus? The helicopter pilot asked us. It would be an unusual offer. From anyone, but from a pilot, it would normally be a cause for serious concern. Not today, though. We were in the private helicopter of Aiki Batista, Brazil's richest man. We'd just flown past the Sugarloaf Mountain and over Copacabana beach, so the statue of Christ the Redeemer that overlooks the city was the obvious next stop on what was becoming the ultimate sightseeing tour of Rio de Janeiro. Aiki, as the minerals magnet is known in Brazil, could easily afford to give us this joyride. Forbes magazine ranks him as the eighth richest man in the world, with a fortune of $27 billion. He's made most of it surprisingly quickly, racking up the bulk of his billions in just the last three years, thanks in large part to one key customer. Indeed, the real purpose of our helicopter trip was to view Mr. Batista's latest project, a vast super port north of Rio built with this customer in mind. The centerpiece of the complex is a two mile long pier jutting straight out into the South Atlantic, which has been dubbed the highway to China. Mr. Batista's companies control enormous reserves of iron ore and oil, commodities the Chinese economy desperately needs. In fact, Chinese demand for the raw materials Brazil has in abundance has pushed prices to record highs, and As a result, Mr. Batista's business and the Brazilian economy is booming. Aiki is confident the boom will continue and that Chinese demand will help power him yet further up the world wealth rankings, I told Carlos Slim, he recalled with a grin, referring to the world's richest man, the Mexican telecommunications tycoon. Clean your rearview mirror on the right hand side and clean your rear view mirror on your left hand side, because I don't know which side I'll be overtaking you. It's a perfect fit, ike told me as we sat in his grand offices overlooking Rio Bay. We've got what China needs. But down on the beaches below Mr. Batista's office, the fit doesn't seem quite so perfect. There are a few products as emblematic of Brazil than the bikini, but Brazil's bikini industry is in trouble, fighting off stiff competition from, you guessed it, China. Maria Helena Victor still remembers the first time she wore a bikini. She and a group of friends saw pictures of Brigitte Bardot sporting this strange new garment in Cannes in the 1950s. They made up copies at home, and then, altogether for safety, wore them down to the beach at Copacabana. They made headlines in Brazilian papers, and Maria Helena's been designing bikinis ever since. Slowly and steadily the business grew until Maria Helena and her daughter Eora were employing a dozen seamstresses full time. Then, three years ago, the Chinese entered the market. Within 12 months, the export business that Eora had been building up had disappeared completely. My biggest competitors used to be other Brazilian companies, iura said ruefully. Now it is the Chinese. And it's not just the bikini industry that's suffering. A recent study found that more than 80% of Brazil's manufactured exports are being adversely affected by competition from China. The problem is that, natural resources aside, Brazil has a similar competitive advantage to China cheap, unskilled labour. As a result, the two countries tend to compete in similar sectors. And just as in most other economies around the world, China tends to win. Mr. Batista's pilot ensured we made a startlingly close acquaintance with the Son of God. To the surprise of the tourists on the balcony at the foot of the statue, our helicopter circled Christ's head three times, giving us an unusually privileged perspective of one of the greatest cities on Earth. Take a similarly elevated perspective on Brazil's current boom and it begins to look as precarious as some of the bikinis way down on Copacabana beach, just in Rowlatt.
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Now here, of course, it's been anything but bikini weather. So let's put that behind us for a moment and travel half a world away to a place sometimes described as the islands, which time forgot. Aldabra Lagoon is in the Indian Ocean, some 600 miles southwest of the Seychelles, and it's home to a unique collection of plants and animals. The islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site, are virtually inaccessible. Their only temporary residence are a handful of research scientists. Tim Ecot has just been to visit them.
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For three hours, the island supply plane cruised above the seemingly empty blue plain of the Indian Ocean. At Assumption island, there's an airstrip where we transfer to a motorboat for the crossing to Aldabra. Lindsay Chong Seng, science director for the Seychelles Islands foundation, is my guide, and after an hour on the sparkling sea, he points out a long, low strip of rugged shoreline. It is south island, the largest of the four main islands surrounding the great Central Lagoon. The lagoon is shallow, a place of ripping currents, vast sand flats, and so big that the whole of Manhattan could fit inside it twice. Stepping from the back of the speedboat into gin clear water up to my knees, I see I'm not alone. Dozens of black tip sharks cluster in the shallows, and among them are larger lemon sharks, each over 7ft long. The splashing of our feet sounds, I am told, like the noise an injured fish might make, and the sharks come to investigate. Once close enough to see that I am human, they dart away, skittish and alarmed, their pale dorsal fins sticking out of the water like the very cartoon image of shark infested water. There's no hotel here, although the expense of running the island and staffing it means that it's sometimes proposed. Visitors are infrequent, a few yachtsmen and, until last year, the occasional small cruise ship. But Somali pirate activity has reduced that market to almost zero. In fact, a few months ago, some pirates landed on the beach, having run out of food and water. With the help of the rifles the rangers used to shoot feral goats, the pirates were arrested, locked in a storeroom, and sent back to the capital, Victoria. Outside the small research block, Island Manager Dr. Nancy Bunbury introduces me to the first of the Aldabra giant tortoises. Please don't feed him, she warns, or he'll follow you into our dining room. And if he doesn't want to leave, it becomes a bit of a problem. Once harvested for meat and exported to the inhabited islands, the tortoises can weigh over 600 pounds. And standing fully upright on all four leathery legs, their heads reach easily to my waist. Lindsay Chong Seng explains that they'll eat anything, including other dead tortoises, any vegetation they can reach, and, intriguingly, a kind of algae, which they seem to cultivate by leaving their droppings in tidal pools. With at least 100,000 giant tortoises, 10 times as many as in the Galapagos, Aldabra is valued by biologists as an ecosystem dominated by reptiles, something that hasn't been seen elsewhere since the time of the dinosaurs. Isolation makes Aldabra's wildlife bold. Fluffy Aldabra nightjars nest on the ground fearlessly, allowing me to lie right beside them with my camera. A small, elegant bird with big feet and russet plumage stalks the undergrowth. Lindsay names it as the white throated Aldabran rail, the last flightless bird in the Indian Ocean. One day I watch as a rail discovers a baby giant tortoise, smaller than my palm, and attempts to peck at it. The tortoise does what tortoises do and retreats inside its shell until the rail loses interest. It will need to avoid not just the rails, but also the two species of land crabs that live on Aldabra coconut crab, with a leg span of over 3ft and weighing up to 10 pounds. At night, they stalk the accommodation block, and I learn to carry a torch on excursions into the lagoon and along the mangrove forested shore, I see frigate birds, crab plovers, dimorphic egrets, green herons and plenty more sharks. At slack tide, it's hard to tell which way lies the open sea and which way the lagoon. I feel as though I'm in another world, a place where nature has been left to take its course. The water sparkles, the sand is as white as the clouds above, and the undergrowth crackles as the crabs and tortoises patrol. Seychelles protects Aldabra by subsidizing the rangers station and science facilities here. With income from the Valais de May, another UNESCO World Heritage site on the island of Pralin and easily accessible by tourists, it's home to Seychelles unique double coconut, the coco de mer, the tree with the largest seed in the plant kingdom. They may not know it, but those day trippers are paying to keep Aldabra free of visitors and a safe haven for a unique collection of plants and animals which few people will ever see.
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And with Tim Ecot dodging the giant coconut crab on the Aldabra Islands, we've reached the end of another edition. I'll be here again next week with more from our own correspondent near and far. Until then, goodbye.